Alan Caruba's blog is a daily look at events, personalities, and issues from an independent point of view. Copyright, Alan Caruba, 2015. With attribution, posts may be shared. A permission request is welcome. Email acaruba@aol.com.

Sunday, March 2, 2014

The Progressive Destruction of the U.S.

By Alan
Caruba

Barack
Obama is the final piece of the map in the progressive movement’s century of
steady destruction of the U.S. dollar, income taxation, and massive, liberal
intrusion into the lives of all Americans from birth to death.

An
excellent analysis of this is found in “The Great Withdrawal: How the
Progressive’s 100-Year Debasement of American and the Dollar Ends” by Craig R.
Smith and Lowell Ponte ($19.95, Idea Factory Press, Phoenix, Arizona). Together
they have written eight books on economic topics.

There is a
great backlash to the Obama administration’s efforts to impose a socialist
economy on America in which the federal government essentially controls all
elements of it. The most recent and dramatic example is Obamacare, the takeover
of one sixth of the economy. The Tea Party movement emerged to protest it in
2009 and has steadily grown as a political movement.

Their
protest march on Washington, D.C. that year drew nearly a million or more
Americans.

In 2010
the movement was instrumental in returning power to the Republican Party in the
House of Representatives. If the political pundits are right, the forthcoming
November midterm elections will remove many of the Democrats who voted for it
and may also return power to the GOP in the Senate. The elections are critical
to thwarting Obama’s further efforts to destroy the nation by adding millions
to its many welfare programs as the result of its failure to increase economic
growth from a dismal 2% per year, the lowest in decades. Presidents Kennedy and
Reagan took office and reversed recessions. Obama has not.

“Either we
successfully reboot the original operating system of individual freedom, free
enterprise, and small government that America’s Framers built into the U.S.
Constitution or the Progressives will by manipulation and force continue to
impose their failed collectivist ideas on humankind’s future,” writes Smith in
the introduction to his book. Make no mistake about it, “collective ideas” is
another way of describing Communism, often referred to as Socialism.

“They aim
to replace Capitalism, private property, ‘selfish’ individualism and God with a
human-made Eden, a utopian humanist society where an all-powerful State would
equally redistribute the world’s wealth and power to the working elite.”

Consider
just five ways progressivism has impacted America; (1) abortion that has killed
more than 55.7 million fetuses since 1973, (2) banning prayer to support the
development of moral values in schools, (3) the spread of same-sex marriage as
a legal definition of marriage, (4) the movement to legalize marijuana, a known
gateway drug, and (5) a culture filled with films and television that exploit
violence and sex.

The
utopian dream has been the creation of intellectuals who view themselves as an
elite group who should control economies and lives. The failure of the former
Soviet Union and the adoption of Communism in China are prime examples of this
elitist notion which, as history has demonstrated, includes the murder of
hundreds of millions in the process. Progressivism depends on the use of force.

Noting the
stalled economic growth in the U.S. Wall Street Journal columnist, Daniel Henniger, addressed the global implications on Feb 26. “If the American
economic engine slows permanently to about 2%, you’re going to see more fires
around the world like Ukraine and Venezuela. At the margin, the world’s
weakest, most misgoverned countries will pop, and violently.”

Craig
points out that “More than 100 years ago, these collectivist ideas began to
dominate Western civilization. In 1913 they took control of the United States
government and began a ‘fundamental transformation’ of our economy, politics,
culture and beliefs that continues today.”

The good
news, however, “The Progressive collectivist vision today is dying and its
death will cause huge changes in our world.” The anger that gave rise to the
Tea Party movement is emerging as a widespread desire for national change.
Efforts to downgrade the freedoms embodies in our Bill of Rights are generating
major resistance.

“The
various collectivisms may still pose a military, political or economic threat
as their power wanes—but fewer and fewer people take the Left seriously as an
ideology anymore. History has thoroughly discredited the Left as both a moral
and practical failure” says Smith, adding that “the trouble is, many have
likewise lost faith in the values that once made the West great—Judeo-Christian
values and belief, free enterprise and the individual rights of the
Enlightenment…Millions of Americans have become hooked, dependent on the
entitlement state and on the paper money conjured out of thin air.”

There are
signs, though, of change. “As of August 2013, polls found that only 35 percent
of Americans supported President Obama’s economic policies, a rating similar to
President Herbert Hoover’s after the start of the Great Depression. He is
destroying the confidence needed to encourage investment in new jobs or to
expand businesses.” More recent polls indicate Obama’s performance in office is
rating poorly.

We are
witnessing the way the Progressive movement works. “When the economy is good,
they raise taxes and expand government. When the economy cycle turns negative,
the politicians blame others, refuse to reduce government—and, increasingly,
use the bad economy as a reason for expanding government and spending even
more.”

That is
why Obama’s policies have added $6 trillion dollars to the national debt and
expanded government welfare programs. At $17 trillion and growing, it is a
massive threat to the economy and to a government that depends on borrowing
money to pay its bills. The downgrade of the nation’s credit rating—the first
in the nation’s history—is a major warning sign if this is not reversed by
electing politicians who want to reduce the debt and the size of the
government.

Thomas
Jefferson said the future of the nation depended on binding those in power
“with the chains of the Constitution”, but we have a President who now
routinely ignores those limits and wants to rule independent of the legislative
branch, Congress, and refuses to enforce existing laws or changes them
unilaterally, an issue the judicial branch increasingly is addressing.

America
needs a major revision to the progressive income tax system that began in 1913.
It needs to end the Federal Reserve’s (a cartel of banks) control of the
economy and its creation of money “out of thin air.” It needs to return to the
gold standard to back the value of the dollar. It needs to end the Department
of Education’s grip on the curriculum that has indoctrinated the generations
since the 1980s to accept Big Government. It needs to eliminate the
Environmental Protection Agency and return this responsibility to the States. These
and other measures must be implemented to return the nation to greatness.

Progressive
politics and policies have reversed the greatness of America making it the
exceptional nation it was before they were imposed a century ago. That is the
challenge of the current and future American generations.

About Me

I am and have been for a long time a writer by profession. I have several books to my credit and my daily column, "Warning Signs", is disseminated on many Internet news and opinion websites, as well as blogs. In addition, I am a longtime book reviewer and have a blog offering a monthly report on new fiction and non-fiction.